SWEET!

I just finished this scrappy quilt top; maybe it will be the first thing I FMQ! Woo hoo!

Roses (Not) on My Table

A while back there was a discussion on the Quiltart list about using scraps to make quilts. I’m a compulsive scrap saver, and sometimes when I’m too nervous to cut into that gorgeous fabric I bought, or when I’m not really sure what kind of quilt I want to make, it’s easier for me to start playing around with stitching scraps together.
These blocks were made in crazy-quilt fashion. I initially moved right from the red & pink of the roses into the green, but the flowers looked too blocky. I ended up stitching another layer of pink or red to the edge of each flower, then flipping it open, trimming it into a curvy shape, and stitching down the edges. I like the softer, curvy edge of the flowers better than the original “crazy-quilt” block.



I quilted each block as I went, then put them together using Fiona’s Quilt as You Go (QAYG) tutorial. I love putting quilts together this way, because I don’t have to wrestle a large one under the needle of my small machine, but I’m still having some problems with the stitching. My walking foot a,nd feed dogs don’t really “grip” the multiple layers of fabric well and move them through the machine at an even rate, so any of the stitching that shows can look very uneven. I had a lot of this bad stitching showing on the back, and unfortunately it was white thread against a pink background, so I ended up painting the thread to match the fabric. You can still see the stitching, but you have to look more closely now :-)





Not bad for a bunch of scraps, dont’cha think?

Quilt As You Go

I seem to have a never-ending supply of scraps. This comes in handy when I’m reluctant to cut into my gorgeous “new” fabrics (although yes, I am fully aware that my kids would sell my gorgeous fabrics in a garage sale for nothing were I to head for the Big Quilting Studio in the Sky).
Anyway, I kept stitching the scraps together, then joining them with other fabric, until I had 12 of these 18” squares:


Around the same time, I ran across this “quilt as you go” tutorial, so I decided that would be perfect for my blocks. I do get tired of wrestling big quilts under the needle of my machine to quilt them.
This time, I quilted these blocks individually, then attached them together according to the tutorial. It was easier than I thought it would be, and I love the result.


Next up on the agenda: finishing up some old WIPs and UFOs, and working on some surface design techniques. But the next pieced quilt I make WILL use some of those gorgeous “new” fabrics!

Oh Baby!

I finished the crib-size scrap quilt I’ve been working on. Here’s the finished quilt:





No one in the family is expecting a little one right now (pretty unusual for my HUGE family), so I’ll put this one up and save it or else check into donating it to Project Linus.
I used a REALLY cool tip to sew the binding onto this quilt. I saw this on “Sewing with Nancy.” I sewed the folded binding onto the front as usual for a double-fold french binding. Instead of hand-stitching the binding to the back (something I really enjoy doing, but just don’t have time for right now) though, I flipped the binding to the back and machine-stitched it from the FRONT:


Using invisible thread, you sew right in the ditch next to the binding (again, on the front). You’ll get a seam on the back that looks like this:



And, because this is invisible thread, you can barely see the seam. This is the best solution I’ve found so far for sewing a nice-looking binding by machine.